The Dictionary of Homophobia (109 page)

In the legal arena, on the other hand, homophobia was the result of hidden standards. From 1949 to 1977, Pasolini was submitted to thirty-three legal procedures: he was accused mostly of pornography, obscenity, gross indecency, and affront to the state religion. But aside the numerous police reports, denunciations for presumed soliciting and
exhibitionism
during trials, the other accusations always contain a homophobic undercurrent that often emerged in the form of more or less explicit moral
censorship
. The San Felice Circeo episode of November 1961 is a classic example of the way homophobic fantasies seek to represent the artist’s “imbalance”: a young gas station attendant accused Pasolini of having attempted to rob him, wearing black hat and gloves, and brandishing a pistol loaded with golden bullets. “At a certain level of cultural underdevelopment, people tend to confuse the author with his characters,” Pasolini commented. “He who describes a thief is a thief,” he continued, in reference to the novel
Ragazzi di vita
, published in 1955, which Pasolini had set in the world of small-time Roman delinquents. Incapable of proving armed robbery, the indictment focused its attention on the hypothesis of sexual assault: the prosecution ordered a psychiatric assessment, which described the accused Pasolini as “a sexual abnormality, a homophile in the most absolute meaning of the word … an abnormality so deep that he consciously accepts his abnormality all the while demonstrating himself to be incapable of being affected by it as such. A homosexual exhibitionist and voyeur … a subject whose instincts are fundamentally flawed and showing profound signs of insecurity.”

In the story of Pasolini’s persecution, two episodes most definitely stand out: the first and the last in the series. On October 22, 1949, Pasolini, who, at the time, was teaching
literature
at a college a few kilometers outside of Casarsa, in Friuli, was denounced by local
carabinieri
for corrupting minors and performing acts of obscenity in a public place. During the previous year, Pasolini was an active communist militant, serving as Secretary of the Santo-Giovanni-de-Casarsa section of the party; his political adversaries, especially the Christian Democrats, cried scandal. The leaders of the Friuli Partito Communista Italiano (PCI, Communist Party of Italy) decided to expel Pasolini from the party without even verifying if the accusation was founded. The academic officials of the college fired him, despite protests from the parents of Casarsa students who wanted him to continue teaching. His father, an exofficer in the Italian army, reacted violently to his son’s situation forcing him to flee to Rome with his mother. Ostracism came not only from the clerical and fascist right, but the conservative left as well: from that moment onward, public opinion would feel it was justified to “confuse the accusations of obscenity, or of contempt of the city gods, laid against the work, with those of corruption of minors attributed to the writer’s life,” said writer Franco Fortini.

If this first and very precocious homophobic episode is emblematic of Pasolini’s life, the second tends to explain his assassination. On the night of November 1, 1975, on an esplanade in the region near the seaplane base of Ostia, Italy, Pasolini was assassinated by seventeen-year-old Pino Pelosi who, after having savagely beaten his victim, drove over the body several times with his car. After his arrest, Pelosi defended himself by saying that he had reacted to an assault by the Pasolini who, after having picked him up at Rome’s central station, had insisted on being repaid through sex. Italian television, on the evening of November 2, described the assassination as a sordid crime, typical of the homosexual world. Most media reports failed to mention the many clues discovered at the crime scene, which implied the presence of other individuals and, possibly, an actual trap. (In fact, Pino Pelosi was condemned in 1976 for involuntary homicide with unknown accomplices; the following year, the Court of Appeal affirmed the sentence, but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to indict any accomplices.)

What remains to be touched upon, as it is an important fact, is the sadomasochistic aspect of Pasolini’s relationship to the homophobia that surrounded him. According to Italian writer Alberto Moravia:

Over time, to the diffused idea in every social
class
in Italy that it is, so to speak, lawful to kill homosexuals, has been added, in this precise case, the other terrible idea according to which Pasolini could not have ended his days in any other fashion: Pasolini had to die…. We were, most likely, not very far from the truth when we said that, over time, in Pelosi’s subconscious, and that of his “accomplices,” grew the obscure conviction that not only was it possible, but it was necessary to kill Pasolini.

Moravia’s words hide the particular relation that, in the scene of this persecution, the victim and the assassin are inextricably linked one to the other, making the crime possible if not inevitable. A conformist, profoundly violent society, hungry for condemnations, could not help but fiercely and unrelentingly hound a victim who was not only nonconformist and rebellious, but destined to falter, and desirous of being symbolically punished: in short, Pasolini was an ideal victim.

Pasolini always enjoyed the vocation of the persecuted innocent—“There are no limits to the pleasure of being humiliated/especially when we feel we are innocent”—which often revealed itself through his taste for retort, despite the disapproval of others. Evoking his soccer years, he stated, “I only played well when we were elsewhere, before a hostile public.” It is known that organized societies always look for their examples among those citizens who, for one reason or another, are considered to be “turbulent” and “different”; Pasolini, the epitome of difference, was driven by masochistic urges of expiation, themselves linked to a frustrated desire of omnipotence, to an original, narcissistic wound—in short, to a feeling of metaphysical exclusion from the world that made up his psychic identity. The perfect “scapegoat,” as he once defined himself, Pasolini was powerfully attracted, since childhood, to the idea of sacrifice: “In my daydreams, there appeared the explicit desire to imitate Jesus…. I saw myself suspended from the cross, nailed there, my loins barely covered by a light veil. On each side of me, there was a large crowd watching me.This public martyrdom finally transformed itself into a voluptuous image.” Of scenes of martyrdom, we know, his works are full, from
Accattone
to
Ricotta
, by way of
Porcile
and
Il vangelo secondo Matteo
(
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
). Pasolini’s innate talent for critical self-exhibition found itself confronted by homophobic aggressiveness, resulting in a long psychodrama, a cruel performance, and a martyrdom that was both symbolic and real.
—
Gian-Luigi Simonetti

Betti, Laura, ed.
Pasolini: cronaca giudiziaria, persecuzione, morte
. Milan: Garzanti, 1977.

Benedetti, Carla.
Pasolini contro Cahnno. Per una letteratura imputa
. Turin: Bollati Boring-hieri, 1998.

Casi, Stefano, ed.
Desiderio di Pasolini. Omosessualità, arte e impegno intellettuale
. Turin: Sonda, 1990.

Contint, Gianfranco. “Testimonianza per Pier Paolo Pasolini.” In
Ultimi esercizi ed elzeviri (1968–1987)
. Turin: Einaudi, 1988.

Fortini, Franco. “Poesia e corruzione.” In
Attraverso Pasolini
. Turin: Einaudi, 1993.

Naldini, Nico, ed.
Lettere 1940–1954
. With a chronology of his life and works. Turin: Einaudi, 1986.

———, ed.
Lettere 1955–1975
. Turin: Einaudi, 1988.

Schwartz, Barth David.
Pasolini Requiem
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.

Siti,Walter. “Tracce scritte di un’opera vivente.” In
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Romanzi e racconti
. Edited by Silvia de Laude and Walter Siti. Vol. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1998.

—Censorship; Cinema; Italy; Literature; Scandal; Violence.

PAUL (of Tarsus)

Paul of Tarsus (c. 5–65 CE) was a Jew who persistently persecuted early Christians until his conversion to the new religion, after which he became one of its most fervent and rigid disciples. In the New Testament, his doctrine actions are predominantly described in the Acts of the Apostles and in his own letters (or epistles) that he sent to the churches he founded.

Paul of Tarsus’s writings are both mystical and moral, expressing interest in the figure of Christ and the relationship between the individual and God. A good deal of Christian
theology
is based upon his writings, in which he proposes an austere philosophy and severe judgment of humanity and its vices, including homosexuality. Homosexual acts are considered sinful as they represent a
perversion
of human existence and nature, created and willed by God; thus, Paul introduces the concept of “unnatural,” a concept largely taken up afterward, and until now, by representatives of the various Christian churches in order to justify their violence against homosexuals and homophobic ideals.

According to Paul, relations between people of the same gender are especially condemnable because they represent a relic of an ancient pagan humanity, with laws foreign to those of Christ, and thus, impure. The condemnation of homosexual acts, thus established upon religious and moral principles, at the same time became a condemnation of those persons who practiced these acts; the distinction between them (acts/ person) was considered too subtle to be truly efficient and avoid abuses.

It is difficult anyway to understand how it is less homophobic to condemn homosexual acts rather than the individuals who practice them—hate the sin, love the sinner—and how this could constitute a sign of “compassion.”
—Thierry Revol

Boyarin, Daniel.
A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of ldentity
. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994.

Hubaut, Michel A.
Paul de Tarse
. Paris: Desclée, 1989.

McNeill, John.
L’Eglise et l’homosexuel, un plaidoyer
. Geneva: Labor & Fides, 1982. [Published in the UK as
The Church and the Homosexual
. 4th ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.]

Nouveau Testament: traduction oecuménique de la Bible
. Paris: Le Cerf/Les Bergers et les Mages, 1983.

Saitrey, Henri-Dominique.
Histoire de l’apôtre Paul, ou Faire chrétien le monde
. Paris: Le Cerf, 1991.

Thévenot, Xavier.
Homosexualités masculines et morale chrétienne
. Paris: Le Cerf, 1985.

—Against Nature; Bible, the; Heresy; Judaism; Sodom and Gomorrah; Theology; Vice.

PEDOPHILE.
See
Pedophilia

PEDOPHILIA

Pedophilia, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is a behavior that has only been recognized as much in Western society for a short time. In fact, as has been rightly noted by French historian Philippe Ariès, the notion of pedophilia is necessarily predicated on the notion of children (i.e. as different from adults), with rights of their own. On the other hand, since the early days of Antiquity, sexual relations between men, and to a lesser extent between women, have been the subject of debate in Western society. Now that it is agreed that children have rights and that they must be protected, the distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia has become more precise, even if the confusion that aims to assimilate homosexuals with “corruptors of youth” (to use a term from the nineteenth century) arises with regularity in homophobic rhetoric.

Greek antiquity, in particular Socratic-Platonic philosophy—to use terminology dear to Michel Foucault—“problematized” the relationship between the
éraste
and his
éromène
. The
éraste
is an adult who engages in sexual relations with his
éromène,
who is a
païs
, that is to say a boy around the age of puberty. This particular relationship is called pederasty (
païd-erastes
), a term which, in current usage, is often synonymous with male homosexuality. Pederasty during Antiquity was a completely codified relationship between free individuals, with no social stigma whatsoever, and which usually ended once the facial hair of the
éromène
started to grow.

If the relationship continued past this point, it was then considered a homosexual relationship between two adults, and thus the object of mockery, as can be interpreted in certain comedies written by Aristophanes; this, of course, is a curious paradox given that presently, in many respects, the situation is reversed. Moreover, homosexual prostitution that led to the loss of civic rights for the prostitute, or the use of violence to force a child to have sexual relations, were behaviors that were fully condemned in this society.

The arrival of Christianity saw the merging of homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia into the term “crime against nature,” punishable by being burned at the stake. It is only progressively, with the emergence of the notion of childhood, that distinctions in the response to this crime begin to appear. The church was primarily concerned with the sexual practices of its faithful, and it is the church that made the first distinctions between the sexual practices of adults and those of children, particularly with regard to penitence. In the handbooks used by confessors, which are an unlimited source for understanding sexuality of the period, one can read that the recommended penitence for sins of the flesh were less severe for children than they were for adults.

While the French Revolution accorded rights to homosexuals by the nineteenth century,
medicine
and law very quickly took over the church’s responsibility for the treatment of what became known as “
perversion
.” Parallel to this, the idea of childhood developed, as well as the idea of alleviating the suffering of minors in general which became coupled with a new preoccupation: the protection of youth. The fact that very young children were put to work in workshops and did not receive a proper education was condemned by doctors and philanthropists, who also felt that promiscuity between children and adults was harmful. In France in the mid-nineteenth century, Ambroise Tardieu, a forensic physician and a professor of legal medicine, exposed the problem of abused children. At the same time in Germany, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the Austro-German psychiatrist, wrote in his seminal work
Psychopathia sexualis
of his revulsion for pederastic adults and their corrupting influence: